Santa Clara County, California
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Supporters
The Climate Reality Project
Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter
350 Silicon Valley
Joan Hartmann, Board of Supervisors Chair, Santa Barbara County, CA
Evelyn Gill, TN Commissioner, Knox County, TN
Judy Arnold, Board of Supervisors President, Marin County, CA
William Reinhardt, Legislator, Albany County, NY
Pete Sorenson, Commissioner, Lane County, OR
Eva Henry, Board of Commissioners Chair, Adams County, CO
Victoria A. Reinhardt, MN Commissioner, Ramsey County
Heidi Hall, Supervisor, Nevada County, CA
Aaron Brockett, Councilor, City of Boulder, CO
Eric Mar, Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University
Paul Fenn, President, Local Power Inc.
Philip Kingston, Council Member, City of Dallas, TX
Carolyn Glanton, Coordinator, Regional Climate Protection Authority
Carbon Free Silicon Valley
Carbon Free Mountain View
John Eisenfeld, Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services
Whitney Hope, Stay Work Media
Sarah Morse, Isothermal Community College
Dorothy Wong, Councilmember, Altadena, CA,
Carrie Radloff, Chair, Northwest Iowa Group of Sierra Club
City of San Louis Obispo, CA
Susan Keber, Trustee, East Hampton Town Trust
Felipe Martinez, Bentwood Wedding Venue, Willioamson County, TX
Caroll Marston, Engineering Consultant, Marston and Associates, Brunswick County, NC
Hayley Edmonston, Climate Resiliency Fellow, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, CA
Consensus exists among the world’s leading climate scientists that we face a major global climate crisis caused by greenhouse gas emissions, with rising sea levels and melting ice sheets creating increasingly unpredictable and unhealthy living environments as we approach a dangerous threshold of global warming. Documented impacts of global warming include but are not limited to increased occurrences of extreme weather events, significant impacts to human health and safety, destruction of ecosystems, and reduced economic productivity.
The United Nations Paris Climate Agreement (“Paris Agreement”) is a historic international agreement reached in 2015 aimed at reducing carbon emissions, slowing rising global temperatures, and helping countries deal with the effects of climate change. All but two countries in the world have signed the Paris Agreement, committing to enact programs to limit global temperature increase to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an expectation that this goal would be reduced to one and a half degrees in the future.
The United States ratified the Paris Agreement on September 3, 2016 and committed to its own target of reducing carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. The United States’ withdrawal could result in an additional three billion tons of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere each year, and an additional increase of as much as 0.3 degrees Celsius in global temperatures by end of the century.
States and local governments are leading the effort to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions; reducing petroleum use in cars and trucks; increasing electricity derived from renewable sources; increasing the energy efficiency savings achieved at existing buildings and making heating fuels cleaner; reducing the release of methane, black carbon, and other short-lived climate pollutants; managing farm and rangelands, forests, and wetlands so they can store carbon; and periodically updating the state’s climate adaptation strategy.
[JURISDICTION]’s geographic location makes it particularly vulnerable to the devastating impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels, drought, flooding, and the concomitant adverse impacts on human health and the environment.
Local jurisdictions, led by the County of Santa Clara, have resolved to take sharp exception to President Trump’s unilateral intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement despite the dire consequences of the planet’s rising temperatures and opposition from communities across the country and world. Proactively responding to climate change provides opportunities to be at the forefront of innovation with respect to a broad range of technology, products, services, and know-how that transitioning to a climate-compatible future brings.